Is there any possible to set up a commonly used format in an email?

We are having MAJOR issues copying and pasting letters and emails from Word into Constant Contact's backwards form. Esspecially when it comes to bullet points or anything abnormal, it seems that no matter what we do, we can't seem to solve indentation issues or spacing issues.

It's extremely frustrating and based on this fact alone, we will most likely be looking for a new email marketing company when our contract is up if we can't figure out an efficient way to do this.

Is there any possible to set up a commonly used format in an email?

I've never known the editor to be completely plug and play with Word. My clients can't believe how much time I spend tweaking things like bullets and indentations and even things as simple as font selections.
Try billing a client for that time. I now import it, remove all formatting and use the editor to reapply it. Yeah, seems like a waste of time, but its the fastest way for some projects and it keeps the time down when someone else is paying.
The new editor still has a little black science to it, but overall its pretty easy to use for starting projects.
Regards,
Tony

Is there any possible to set up a commonly used format in an email?

I use Evernote to organize the content of my emails, and I frequently run into problems. The best option is to go with plain, unformatted text and then format it once you copy it into CC. I use Evernote in Chrome which lets me remove formatting automatically when I paste by hitting CRTL+SHIFT+V.

Chat Transcript for Live Chat with Ellen Regarding Color in Your Email - April 21, 2011

If you missed Ellen's Live Chat with us today, here is a Transcript of how it went. Thanks to everyone that participated! If you didn't make it, you can stop by Friday morning at 11am for her next Live Chat!

RosalindM.: We'll
get started in a few minutes. Hopefully we'll have some great questions and an
interesting conversation. Talk at 3!

RosalindM.:
Welcome to our chat! We'll be starting in a few minutes.

ebrezniak: Hello
all, Ellen Brezniak here...and just delighted to be chatting you today.

MariaS13: Hello
and glad to be here

ebrezniak: Quick
reminder, I run product strategy here at constant contact and am the person in
the video recently posted to the community that talked about picking colors for
your emails

DellaR: Thanks
for the tip re Color Cop and Hex Picker.... can you remind me when this feature
will be part of Constant Contact?

ebrezniak: Happy
to, an integrated color picker - much like one you see in PowerPoint - will be
available in our editor the week after next - May 2

ArthurD3: I am
fairly new to constant contact, when I went to change the color of a box the
outline of the box did not change is there a way to change the outline also or
is it best to stay with the colors in the template?

Heidster: Hi
Ellen- saw this question on the board and wonder what you think. Sue Moore of
the Waukesha Public Library asked: I really struggle with putting graphics into
my newsletter especially if I have to resize them or move them around etc. Is
there a simpler way to do this? If I drag/move the picture once it's in the
text table everything gets out of wack. I don't know any coding so would
appreciate any help answers in plain old text.

ebrezniak: First
- a quick answer to Arthur - you might need to change the color via the Global
Colors and Fonts capability on the left-hand side of the email editor. That is
where you can change the border colors for a block

ebrezniak: now
for Sue Moore's question - first let's tackle the resizing part of it. The most
reliable way to resize an image is to insert it into the block and right-click
on it and select the resize option in the menu.

ebrezniak: to
move an image in your email - all you need to do these days is drag and drop
it. depending on how long you have been using our service, you may not realize
you can now drag and drop. we added this capability earlier this year

Heidster: That is
one of the features, the drag and drop, I use every day. It rocks.

Jarrad_M: How do
I change the color of my links?

Jarrad_M: I get
that question all the time in Support!

ebrezniak: You
right-click on the inserted link and select "change" from the drop
down menu. A window will pop-up select the color that you want and hit insert.

Jarrad_M: Thanks
Ellen, I hope that helped out some of our chatters

ebrezniak: Here
is an interesting post - CoreyC4 said: I do have a request for something I
would like added-- selections for symbols, such as you would get with the font,
"Webdings". Right now I'm severely limited to 'diamonds' for bullets,
and have no other viable selections for the 'artistic' inserts possible a font
of that type. Is there a source, like Color Cop, that symbols can be chosen
from?

ebrezniak: There
are two ways to address this...first, you can always cut and paste any symbol
from Word into a block. That problem is that it does not bring the
"bulleted list" behavior I think you want to have; meaning it will
not indent and align the text.

Heidster: I know
it is important to match the colors of my emails to my website but what do you
think about matching your Twitter background and Facebook page as well?

ebrezniak: The
other way to get different bullet styles is to go into the advanced editor and
change the html. This is definitely a more challenging tactic, but one that
works. We don't know of any tool, like ColorCop, to help with symbols. Any
other suggestions from folks online?

RosalindM.: Glad to have you join John

ebrezniak: To Heidster
matching twitter and FB pages - that's a personal choice. Brand reinforcement
is always smart. But, making sure your band works for the communication channel
matters as well.

johnk44: A big
problem is spacing of text lines. Sometimes I get more space than I want, and
sometimes I do not get enough. I often have to go to the html text editor to
correct the spacing.

ebrezniak: Matching
twitter and fb pages - that's a personal choice. Brand reinforcement is always
smart...and hopefully makes you more recognizable. You also need to consider
how your brand works for a given communication channel. do your colors look
good on twitter? Try and see it. The good news - you can always change it

CarolP8: Will we
b able to print this whole chat?

RosalindM.: We're
working on getting a transcript

johnk44:
Sometimes I find preset items in the template that do not have options for
color changes.

ebrezniak: Hey
johnk44 - great question. One trick you might want to try is instead of hit
return/enter for a line space, hold down shift and hit return. That is called a
soft return and seems to be better handled by the editor - it gets more
predictable results. And you should always feel free to to call support and ask
for help.

ebrezniak: on the
preset options in templates - that is indeed the case. not all elements in a
template can be changed. Sorry about that, it was a design decision made during
the creation of the specific template. We are doing this less often. One other
idea is to use our very cool new template picker and find a new template really
quickly and easily and start with that instead of the one that is not as
flexible.

johnk44: Spacing
is bullet lists is often a big problem. There is often extra space before and
after the bullet list, and the space between the bullet points is usually too
large. I usually can correct this by going to the html text editor, but that
does make extra work.

ebrezniak: hi
john - i hear you. Bulleted lists are tricky and we continue to try and what is
happening. This is especially tricky if you are cutting and pasting that
bulleted list from word....web editors definitely like to add those extra
spaces.

johnk44: Another
issue I have with bullet lists is indenting. If I have a graphic to the left a
bullet list, the bullets will sometimes overlap the graphics, no matter how I
specify the graphic placement and bullet indent.

ebrezniak: . My
suggestion is that you add a caption to the image and just remove the default
caption text. What this does is frames the images into a table and that often
will prevent the bulleted text from overlapping. if this doesn't work, give
support a call

johnk44: This is
on a different issue. To remove bounces from an address list, I have to
download the bounce addresses and then use the remove data using an upload of
the downloaded bounce list. Are you developing an easier way to remove bounces
from an address list?

johnk44: Thanks
for the answer on overlapping.

GLOBALTALK: I
second the motion to make it easy to purge our lists for those who bounce and
those who do not open our emails over a period of time.

ebrezniak: Earlier
this year we did make it easier to remove bounces...all you have to do is click
on the bounce number in the report and when you get to the manage bounces page
you simply check what category you want to remove and hit the remove button at
the bottom of that box

johnk44: A tool
will allows one list to specify which address should be removed from

GLOBALTALK:
Sometimes bounces are just an aberration and not invalid addresses. How can we
"select" or "filter" the bounce list?

ebrezniak: It is
harder to remove addresses that do not open as it is less obvious what should
be done. We do have a great FAQ - 1798 that gives you some excellent advice.

GLOBALTALK:
Thanks. I'll check it.

johnk44: A tool
that would remove addresses specified in one list from another list would be
very useful. Actually a set of boolian tools for lists would be a big help in
creating specialized lists.

MelissaL9: We are
looking to change our format. Is there any easy way to do so?

MelissaL9: We
have two schools and a congregation and would like each to have their own
backgrounds

ebrezniak:
MelissaL9 - do you mean change the layout of the template or the background
colors?

MelissaL9: both actually

MelissaL9: I
tried using the school one but they only had three options for color blocks

ebrezniak:
Heidster will help you Melissa....and my chat time has run out. I'll be back
online to chat again tomorrow. This has been really interesting and some great
questions. We'll be following up with blog posts on some of the topics raised
here as we are sure others have the same questions. Thanks for helping kick off
our first Community chat!

MelissaL9:
Thanks!

GLOBALTALK: Thank
you.

johnk44: Thanks

Heidster: Hi
MelissaL9- great questions and there are two parts to your answer. First on the
background colors; I suggest picking a template layout that will work for your
content needs. Use the Global colors and fonts and change it to one of the
school colors. Then hit the copy function and will keep your changes on the
layout but let you change the color to what you want. You can set yourself up 3
templates for each of your schools and congregations.

Heidster: The
second part you ask about is the format. Most often people are talking about
images that are associated with the template they picked. These images can be
changed to anything you want. Feel free and upload your own images or pick from
the thousands of images found in the image library. This way each of the
schools and congregation will have their own unique look to their email messages.

RosalindM.:
Thanks Heidster! Thanks all. See you tomorrow or around the Community.

Formatting text on Homepage

I dont' seem to be able to get the script to be single-spaced. Have tried pasting in my word copy but the only time text is single spaced is if it is a bulletted or numbered. And I don't find any "clear format" option for the Homepage blocks.